Beans & peas
Borlotti / cranberry beans
More flavorful and productive than kidney or pinto. Direct sow after frost, in ground.
- Outside
- Direct after frost, soil 60F+, late May
- Where
- In ground or raised bed
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Deep soak once or twice a week; ease off as pods marble
- Harvest
- Sep to Oct, fresh shell or dry
Care
- Water
- A deep soak once or twice a week while the pods fill, every 3 to 4 days in a hot dry stretch and less when rain helps. Let the finger test set the pace; a bed holds moisture well down between soaks. Water the soil, not the leaves, then ease right off as the pods marble so the beans cure clean.
- Sow
- Direct sow in late May once the ground is warm, dropping a seed every 3 or 4 inches across the biggest block you can give it. With dry beans the yield scales with square footage, so sow tight and never thin.
- Feed
- Another nitrogen fixer, so a shovel of compost or castings at planting is plenty and nothing more. Heavy nitrogen only delays the flowers and buries the pods in leaf.
- Ready
- Shell the marbled pods fresh in September for a no-soak pot, or leave the rest to go papery and rattle for the dry jar. Hang whole plants under cover if a wet spell arrives first.
- Trouble
- Rain before the pods dry: pull the plants and finish them under cover. Stem rot in a crowded, wet patch: white mold, widen the spacing and rotate out of beans for 3 years. Chewed leaves: bean beetles, cosmetic on a dry crop unless it turns heavy.
In a bag?
- No
- A shell-and-dry bean grown for volume by the square foot, borlotti wants a wide block of ground or bed; a bag holds too few plants to be worth it, though the bush form gives a token picking in one.
Borlotti out-produce and out-flavor the kidneys and pintos they share the bean patch with, which is why they get the biggest block of it. Same lazy season: direct sown after frost, left standing until the pods dry down in September.
Growing
Sow straight into warm ground in late May, tight, a seed every three or four inches, in the biggest patch the plan allows; dry beans pay by the square foot, not by the plant. Cranberry types add a stage the others lack: pods gone marbled but not yet papery shell out as fresh beans in September and cook straight away, no soaking. Whatever stays on the plant dries standing, and if a wet stretch argues, plants come up whole to finish under cover. Give water freely until the pods plump, then taper as they marble; a dry finish is half of clean shelling.
Varieties
Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco, sold in English as Tongue of Fire, comes in bush and climbing forms, and the bush form suits these rows. Vermont Cranberry is the New England strain that has shrugged off this weather for two centuries.
In the kitchen
Fresh-shelled in September they simmer to cream in half an hour and make the year's best pasta e fagioli. The dried remainder jars for winter and cooks faster than any store bean.